About 20 percent of third-party apps available through the Android marketplace allow third-party access to sensitive data, and can do things like make calls and send texts without the owners' knowledge, according to a recent security report from security firm SMobile Systems. There's no indication that any of the highlighted apps is malicious, but the report does underscore the inherent risks of a more open ecosystem as opposed to Apple's oppressive yet more controlled environment, with every app being vetted before availability.

So how about a bit of sane discussion on Google's real-world provisions here, what Google are actually doing and planning to do, instead of pontificating from on high about how users cannot be relied upon to do the best thing by themselves. Apparently, for Andoid phones, they aren't going to be asked to.

From the original quoted article, Google's response was this:

A Google spokesman dismissed those claims.

"This report falsely suggests that Android users don't have control over which apps access their data," the Google spokesman said on Wednesday morning. "Not only must each Android app get users' permission to access sensitive information, but developers must also go through billing background checks to confirm their real identities, and we will disable any apps that are found to be malicious."

Google apparently really meant it when they said they would disable any apps that are found to be malicious.

Googles in-built provision to remotely zap malicious Android apps destroys the original article's criticism of Android, but to my mind it opens up a whole plethora of utterly different potential criticisms for Google to answer to. The self-same zapper can presumably, at Google's say-so, zap anything at all on people's phones.